User's Guide:
CMM Validator Release 1.2.1
Contents:
- Overview
- Functionality
- User Interface
- Using the Validator
- Selecting Processing Options
- Running the Validator and
Interpreting Output
- Editing a Manifest
- Overview
- 2.3.2) Launching the
Editor
- User Interface
- Saving Changes and
Re-Validating
- Running Scripts
- Functionality
- Writing Command Scripts
- User Interface
1) Overview
1.1) Functionality
The
Validator
is intended to be used during the pre-processing of a Common
Media Manifest (CMM) file. When validating a manifest with this
tool, the user may select what level of validation checks will
be applied. The levels are, in increasing level of rigor:
- Common Media Manifest (CMM):
- At a minimum, all manifests will be checked for
conformance with the CMM Schema (i.e., does the Manifest XML
comply with the schema XSD).
- When the 'Constraints' option is enabled the
manifest will also be checked for conformance with all
additional constraints and requirements that are not
specified via XSD but are identified in the full specification. This includes
checking the internal consistency of the manifest to verify
that all internal references are valid (e.g., if a PictureGroupID
is referenced by an Experience then a PictureGroup
with that ID value is also defined). Checks of external
references (i.e., URLs of content staged on a CDN) are
considered out of scope for the Validator and are not
tested.
- Manifest Information Model: Validates a
Manifest file as conforming to the specified structure (a.k.a.
'model') as defined by a specification's Information Model.
Validation against a Manifest Information Model is only
performed on Manifests that have passed all CMM validation
checks without any errors.
- CMM Profile: A Manifest that has passed the IM
validation stage may also be checked for conformance with a
specific profile. Profile validation requires the
selection of a specific profile (see Step #4 of Selecting Processing Options for
details).
1.2) User Interface
Figure 1: Validator UI
The user interface is shown in Figure 1. From top to bottom, the
main components are:
- Menus providing access to generic capabilities. The
primary one is the "Processing" menu. This allows the user to
select the types of validation checks to be performed and the
level of logging output desired.
- The Manifest Tool Bar, which is used for:
- selection of one or more manifest files to be
validated,
- selection of a Profile the manifest(s) are intended
to support, and
- access to the integrated Manifest Editor.
- The Logging panel used to display and filter the
messages resulting from the validation process
2) Using the Validator
2.1) Selecting Processing
Options
- The first step is to configure basic options and
preferences (e.g., logging output). This is done via the check
boxes in the Processing menu (Fig 2). The user may:
- filter validation-related messages based on their
severity and
- enable or disable informational and status messages.
Figure 2: Validation Criteria Menu
- The next step is to select which files will be
validated. There are three mechanisms provided:
- Use the Open File... menu item to select a
Manifest file
- The Recent.. menu item may be used to
select from a history of recently accessed files.
- A left-click on the 'File' text area (to the
right of the
button) will pop open a File Chooser dialog.
If a directory is selected, all Manifest and MEC files
found in the directory will be processed. Alternatively a
single file may be selected. Note, however, that if the
selected source is a directory containing multiple files,
then all files will be validated against the same set of
options.
- Next the user may optionally identify an
Interactivity Profile that the manifest is intended to support.
Note that for a Manifest compliant with CMM V1.5 or later, any
profiles specified are in addition to any Profile
specified in the Manifest file itself.
2.2) Running the Validator
and Interpreting Output
Once all validation options have been set, the validation
process may be executed via the
RUN
button. When the validation process completes, the results will
be displayed in the Logging panel (see Figure 3).
Figure 3: Validation Results
The navigation pane on the left side allows the user to
select a sub-set of messages to be displayed on the right side.
Messages are hierarchically grouped first by the Manifest they
apply to, then by the severity level (i.e., Warning, Error,
etc.), and finally by the type of validation check resulting in
the message (e.g., CPE Model). The levels, in order of
decreasing severity, are:
-
Fatal
: Indicates the inability to perform any processing on a file.
For example, attempting to process an Avails based on an
unsupported version of the schema would result in a FATAL log
entry.
-
Error
: a problem that must be corrected. An example would be the
absence of a required property or the use of an unrecognized
value for an enumerated type (e.g., an invalid language code)
-
Warning
: a problem or inconsistency that does not have to be
corrected but may be worth looking into. For example, an Image
in the Inventory is never referenced.
-
Notice
: indicates that a recommended Best practice was not
followed (e.g. the use of non-EIDR ID values for IDs)
-
Debug
: diagnostic output that should only be produced when
requested by Movie Labs.
The last type of log entry is an
Info
message. These are used to provide a user with summary and
status information about the file being validated. The
generation of Info messages may be enabled or disabled via the
Processing -> Logging
menu (see Fig 2 above).
Icons are used to indicate the most severe problem found
in any branch of the message hierarchy. For example, Figure 3b
shows that only one of the three manifests that were processed
contains errors.
Figure 3b: Severity of Log Messages
The message display pane on the right provides a table
showing all the messages in which ever branch of the message
hierarchy has been selected in the navigation pane. Some log
messages will provide additional information via tool
tips. Where possible, this will include references to specific
sections of the documentation that cover the identified problem.
The displayed log messages may be sorted by means of a left-click
on any of the column headers (to sort by line number click on
the 'Line' column header). Subsequent left-clicks will reverse
the sort order.
By right-clicking on the message display pane, a pop-up
menu may be accessed (see Figure 4). Available actions are:
- show the XML associated with the error in an Editor
window,
- clear the entire contents of the message log, or
- save to a file the currently displayed group of
messages in CSV format
Figure 4: Message Log Pop-up Menu
The saving and/or clearing of the log file are simple
operations and the user interface for both of these is
self-explanatory. Usage of the Editor is covered in detail in
the next section.
2.3) Editing a Manifest
2.3.1) Overview
The CMM Validator includes a built-in XML Editor that may be
used to correct any errors found during the validation process.
Note that this is not intended to provide a full-featured XML
authoring capability similar to those provided by tools such as
XML
Spy or Oxygen-XML. Rather it is focused on
providing an easy-to-use and integrated capability for quickly
correcting errors and then re-running the validation tests.
The Editor UI is implemented as a separate window (see
Figure 5). Multiple Editor windows may be opened at the same
time, with each displaying a different Manifest file. Note,
however, that there may only be one Editor window for any given
file.
Figure 5: Manifest Editor
2.3.2) Launching the
Editor
There are three ways to launch the XML Editor:
- As described in Section 2..2, an Editor may be launched
by the context menu displayed when the user right-clicks on a
The editor will scroll the display to the line associated with
the log entry.
- An Editor may be launched by right-clicking on the file
name displayed in the navigation pane:
.
- An Editor may also be launched using the EDIT button in
the tool bar:
When an editor is launched for a specific Manifest:
- if an editor window for the Manifest file has not been
previously accessed, a new Editor will be created and
displayed.
- if an editor for the Manifest file already exists but
has been minimized (i.e., iconified) by the user, it will be
opened and brought to the foreground.
- if an editor for the Manifest file already exists, it
will scroll to display the selected line in that file.
- if the log message used to access the editor does not
have a specific location associated with it, or the editor was
launched using the Menu Bar, the current line will be set to
the first line in the Manifest.
2.3.3) User Interface
The Editor window has the following components:
- a text pane which uses colors for syntax highlighting,
- a menu bar providing access to the available editing
functions
- line numbers displayed on the left edge that includes
markers indicating errors and warnings, and
- display of status messages across the bottom of the
editor window.
These are shown in Figure 6.
Figure 6: Editor UI
The status messages are linked to the marker icons
displayed along side the line numbers. A single left or right
click on a marker will result in the associate log entry being
displayed in the status panel.
2.3.4) Saving Changes and
Re-Validating
To save changes, simply use either the pull down menu or the
<Ctrl>S
shortcut. Once the Manifest file has been saved the file may be
re-validated.
The changed manifest may also be saved under a new name using
the
Save As
menu option. If the Manifest is saved under a new name then the
user must explicitly identify the new manifest as the
Validator's
Source
before it can be validated. Also it is important to remember
that the existing Editor window will still be displaying
the original Manifest file. In order to edit the newly saved
file, the user must:
- select the new manifest as the source file to
validate,
- run the validation, and then
- select one of the resulting log messages to open an
Editor window for the new manifest file.
3) Running Scripts
3.1) Functionality
Validation of multiple Manifests may be performed using
scripts that can specify any of same options and settings
available thru the user interface. A script may easily be used
to process a set of manifests with specified sub-sets being
handled using different options. All results are automatically
displayed in the GUI's log display but the script engine
supports the option of also writing the log to a file.
3.2) Writing Command
Scripts
3.2.1) Structure
A script file is written using the JSON syntax.
The structure for a validation script is as follows:
3.2.2) Examples
The following is an example of script that validates two
Manifest files plus any Manifests found in a specific folder and
then saves the message log in an output file:
{
"validate":{
"pathPrefix":"./MediaManifests/",
"checks":{
"contraints":"Y",
"bestPrac":"N"
},
"logging":{
"level":"Warning",
"output":"./scriptLog01.xml"
},
"manifests":[
{
"file":"si_tests/CMM_BBB_v0.1.xml",
"profile":"DemVal"
},
{
"file":"si_tests/CMM_Sita_v0.1.xml",
"profile":"none"
},
{
"file":"studio",
"profile":"IP-1"
}
]
}
}
The next two examples illustrate the use, or non-use, of the
pathPrefix
. In the first example, all relative paths are resolved using
the present working directory as the base. Both
foo1.xml
and
foo2.xml
should therefore be in the
pwd
.
{
"validate":{
"pathPrefix":"./Demos/",
"manifests":[
{
"file":"foo1.xml"
},
{
"file":"./foo2.xml"
},
{
"file":"/foo3.xml"
}
]
}
}
In the next example,
foo1.xml
and
foo2.xml
are still co-located but are now in in a sub-directory of the
directory containing the script file.
foo3.xml
should still be in the same location as the previous examples
since it is specified using an absolute path.
{
"validate":{
"manifests":[
{
"file":"foo1.xml"
},
{
"file":"./foo2.xml"
},
{
"file":"/foo3.xml"
}
]
}
}
3.3) User Interface
Selection and execution of a script is via the
Run Script..
menu entry. Script files are not selectable using the
File
text-entry field used to specify a Manifest file.
Once a script file has been selected the execution is
automatic. It is recommended that the contents of the log
display be cleared prior to executing a script. Failure to do so
will result in any previous messages being included in the saved
log file.
Figure 7: Script Selection and
Execution
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